Monessen woman accused of fraud

We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

Police charged a Monessen woman on Tuesday after she allegedly acquired false prescriptions she had called in for herself.

Erica Marie Ciepley, 33, of 52 Scenery Blvd., is accused of calling in prescriptions to the Monessen Rite Aid from two physicians' offices and picking them up last month.

Monessen police Officer Dave Yuhasz said he was called to the pharmacy on April 18 where pharmacist Lindsay Bajek said she received phone messages left late at night requesting 30 tablets of Vicodin. The voice message allegedly requested the prescription for Ciepley from the office of Dr. Belasco Ober and Associates in Washington Township.

Bajek said she contacted the physician, Dr. Anthony Churak, who confirmed no such prescription was called in for Ciepley, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Bajek informed the officer that another prescription for 90 tablets of Clonazepam was called in on April 11 from an employee at the office of Dr. Ravindra Mehta in Brownsville.

Bajek said she placed a call to that doctor's office, which confirmed that no such prescription was placed.

Yuhasz said he later contacted both doctors' offices, verifying Bajek's claims.

According to the affidavit, Cieply allegedly picked up the Vicodin on April 15 at the pharmacy's drive-through window where she engaged in a conversation with Bajek.

Bajek checked the voice recordings for the prescriptions that had been called in and identified the voice as Ciepley's, according to police.

Ciepley was charged with two counts each of controlled substance by fraud/deception, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of a controlled substance.

Yuhasz said Ciepley will receive the charges via summons.

Monessen police Chief John Mandarino said the state Attorney General's office also is looking into the case.

Rick Bruni Jr. is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at rbruni@tribweb.com or 724-684-2635.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.